Why Artists and Creatives Have an Unfair Advantage at Internet Marketing

If you’re an artist or creative person of any kind then ‘creating’ is a lot higher on your list of priorities than ‘selling’.

One of the great joys of pursuing your creative passion is the sheer pleasure of writing, painting, making music, acting, taking pictures or whatever you do — without any ulterior motive, and without needing to show any kind of ‘return on investment’. You do it because you love to do it. Amen to that.

On the other hand, even if you don’t want to be a millionaire, I bet you wouldn’t mind a little fame. Not vulgar Hello! Magazine celebrity, but maybe the respect of your fellow artists, and some critical recognition. A few adoring fans probably wouldn’t hurt either.

You don’t have to be rich as well as famous, but all of us have bills to pay, so I’m guessing you wouldn’t mind earning a decent living from your creative work. Getting paid to do what you love has to be one of the greatest gigs on earth.

We are now living at a time of unprecedented opportunity for artists and creative professionals. Once upon a time, if you wanted to get your work in front of an audience, you had to submit it to an editor, agent, manager, curator, talent scout, whoever. A gatekeeper who had the power to open the gate and usher you through, or slam it in your face.

They called the shots, so when they said “Jump!” we jumped — and when they said “10%” we agreed to 10%. What else were we going to do?

Now, the Internet gives you the chance to gatejump, to build your own platform, find your own fans and sell your work directly to them. And it won’t cost you a fortune. Most of the software and tools you’ll need are either free or very low cost.

And that’s not even the really good news — it gets even better …

Your Creativity Gives You an Unfair Advantage

One of the biggest trends in internet marketing at the moment is something called content marketing. In a nutshell, it means creating and giving a way original media content that doesn’t look like marketing — but functions like marketing.

For example, Matthew Inman creates hysterically funny cartoons and gives them away for free on his website The Oatmeal. And because they are so cool and funny, lots of people send their friends to look at them, via Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. When you visit his site, he offers to send you more cool cartoons for free. What’s not to like? I’m just one of thousands of people who have signed up for his free cartoons.

As a result, Matthew has a mailing list of people who want to hear from him. He also has a shop on his website, where you can buy posters and mugs of his cartoons. And he has a book coming out soon. Not everyone who visits his site or signs up for his mailing list will become a customer — but enough of them do to create a nice income stream for Matthew. So Matthew gets to be a professional cartoonist, his website visitors get a good laugh for free, and his loyal customers are even more thrilled with their purchases. Win-win-win.

Not only that, but people like me, with audiences of our own, start doing his marketing for him, by writing about his website and recommending his stuff.

Is Matthew highly creative? Yes. Is he generous? Yes. Does he have a smart business strategy? You bet.

Matthew understands the fact that what people are looking for online is original and remarkable media content. In his case, he’s producing entertainment. But others have succeeded with art, news and particularly education. He is a visual artist, so obviously he uses images. But others are using text, audio and video just as successfully.

You see, even when Matthew gives away his cartoons for free, he’s not really giving them away for free. He’s giving them in return for visitors to his website and subscribers to his mailing lists. In a nutshell, he’s giving his work away in return for attention. Now that he has an audience paying attention, he’s in a very strong position to sell products, services, advertising or whatever else he wants.

Matthew’s success (ahem) illustrates one of the central paradoxes of Internet marketing: the less your media content looks like advertising, the more effective it will be as advertising.

If he had started a website that was nothing more than an advert for his books and posters, how much traffic do you think he would get? Not much. But because he is giving away something genuinely valuable and making it easy for others to copy and share it, he’s created a business that virtually markets itself. Welcome to the future.

In my own case, my business was transformed the day I added a blog to the Wishful Thinking website. Before that, I had a nice-looking brochure website that told people what a good coach and trainer I was — and which hardly sold a thing. When I started the blog, my website traffic took off — and so did the new business enquiries. My version of content marketing is to write educational articles with practical tips for creative people. Over the last four years, this has become my main source of new business, and has led to some amazing business opportunities I’d never have dreamt of when I started out.

Internet marketers have known about content marketing for years, and some of them really do earn millions of dollars a year with little more than a laptop, a network of trusted associates, and some very large mailing lists.

Nowadays, companies in all kinds of industries are starting to cotton on to the fact that they need to start thinking like media companies, and producing original articles, videos, podcasts, educational resources and news updates, if they want to command attention and generate online buzz and business.

And you know what? Lots of them are tearing their hair out. You don’t go into the frozen food business because you want to work in media. But now they are faced with having to create entertaining and engaging media content, or be left behind.

Even their marketing departments are confused. Remember the paradox: the more your media content looks like advertising the less effective it will be as advertising. If you’ve been working in a traditional marketing department — categorising and ‘targeting’ people and treating them like ‘consumers’, bombarding them with advertising and marketing-speak — this is a hard lesson to learn.

You of course, don’t have that problem. Creating original, engaging, remarkable images, sounds, text, music or video is what you do best. You’re already a one-person media company. Even if you hate the very idea of marketing, you should know that when it comes to Internet marketing, your creativity gives you an unfair advantage.

If you’d like to know what you can do with that advantage, read on.

Option 1: Build Your Own Audience

The first and sexiest option is to do what Matthew did and build your own audience online, creating a remarkable website that you love to work on and people love to visit and tell their friends about.

If you do this smartly, it means other people will send you potential customers, you’ll be found easily on the search engines and you will gradually build up mailing lists of fans who are prepared to pay good money for your work. Kevin Kelly famously estimated that a creator needs only 1,000 true fans to make a living via the Internet. The number obviously varies depending on what you are saying and how much you can charge for it, but the basic principle still holds.

If you’re reading this thinking “That’s all very well for those people, but I work in such a non-commercial medium that I can’t imagine earning enough money from it”, then hold that thought for a moment. For one thing, who would have thought that solo bass playing could be the foundation of a viable career?

And for another, even if you would struggle to earn a living from your primary creative passion, maybe there’s something related to it that could provide you with a viable and fulfilling business.

For example, I write poetry, and not even the trendy hip kind of poetry at that. Old-fashioned stuff like sonnets, blank verse and sestinas. I’m not banking on it making me a millionaire any time soon. But I’ve discovered that people are willing to pay me to teach them about creativity, productivity and other professional skills for creative people. The result is that I love my work so much that it doesn’t really feel like work. And thanks to the wonders of content marketing and the Internet, I even love the marketing side of things.

What could be more fun than writing about your favourite artists, writers, films and rockstars? Nice work if you can create it — and I’m glad I did.

Option 2: Partner with Others

Remember those company owners tearing their hair out at the prospect of having to start producing media content? To them, it’s a nightmare — but for you, it’s an opportunity.

You have the ability to write the articles, draw the images, record the music and produce the videos they need. What’s to stop you teaming up with them – to help them create the online presence they need, and to allow you to learn a decent living doing something you enjoy?

I’m not suggesting you go out and start composing odes to frozen peas. (Not unless it really blows your hair back.) Pick a company you really admire, whose products or services you use and recommend. Have a look at their website — how does it compare with Matthew’s? Could you help them do better? Can you see yourself writing about them, or building them a website, or helping them make educational videos that genuinely help their customers? If so, what’s to stop you getting in touch with them?

I’m not talking about freelance gigs either. You have an unfair advantage, remember? That’s worth more than an hourly rate. Look for companies who are willing to partner with you, for a share of the profits or even a stake in the business. That way you reap the true rewards of your efforts, and both of you have a real investment in making the venture a success.

Have a look at the English Cut blog. It’s written by Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon. When he started it, he was in need of new clients. Now he has a long waiting list of people who want to spend thousands of pounds on one of his suits — which he attributes directly to the success of his blog.

Now have a look at the Stormhoek wine blog. Stormhoek is a small South African winery, which was in need of new customers before it started the blog. And thanks to the blog and various other initiatives, its sales have skyrocketed in the last few years. And for some reason they’re doing very well in places like Silicon Valley and Texas.

In both cases, that “some reason” is cartoonist Hugh MacLeod. Not only does he run his own successful business by his Gapingvoid website, he’s the mastermind behind English Cut and Stormhoek’s online marketing. He showed them how to use blogging to command attention and attract new customers, and it worked out very well for all concerned.

I also use partnering in my business. As well as running Wishful Thinking, I’m a partner in Lateral Action with Brian Clark, one of the most successful Internet marketers on the planet, and Tony Clark, who is also Brian’s partner on hugely successful ventures such as Teaching Sells and Third Tribe.

Now why would a couple of ‘big shot’ American entrepreneurs want to partner with an introverted poet from England? One reason is that I love writing about creativity, and I’m prepared to write and edit the Lateral Action blog which powers our content marketing strategy. Meanwhile, they get to work on the bits of the business they love doing. Win-win-win again.

Here’s the Bad News

You knew there was some bad news, right? Whenever I run my workshop on Web Marketing for Creative People, I can sense people getting excited when I tell them about the opportunities of the online world. But it’s not long before someone raises their hand and asked the following question:

But doesn’t this take an awful lot of time?

And the answer, of course, is “Yes”. If you really want to succeed online, it will take a lot of time. Let’s face it, if you want to succeed at anything worthwhile, it’s going to take a lot of time.

If you feel discouraged by that, think about how you feel when somebody admires your skill at writing, drawing, playing music or whatever. “I’d love to be able to do that,” they tell you, “but I bet it takes a lot of time to learn, right?”. And what can you say?

Of course it takes a lot of time — but you do it anyway, because you love doing it, and because you want the results it gives you. You know there are no shortcuts, but you’re happy to accept the challenge.

Finding and nurturing your thousand true fans is hard work, make no mistake. It takes a lot of time, not to mention creativity and sheer persistence. Only you can decide whether the potential rewards are worth investing your time and effort. Or whether it would be easier to go the traditional route, and catch the eye and win the favour of the gatekeepers in your industry.

Technically, it’s not rocket science but there is a bit of a learning curve involved. You can get help with that, but unless you already an active internet user, you’ll need to be prepared to learn a little about the technical side of things. I should point out that I’m not a programmer or web designer. I am a wordsmith and a ‘people person’ with a background in psychotherapy, coaching and training. If I can do it, so can you.

Probably the biggest hurdle for many creative people is the very idea of putting yourself out there and selling things. You might worry that it feels like ‘selling out’. Or that it’s just plain scary. I’m afraid I can’t sugarcoat this bit: if you want to earn a living from your creative work, you need to learn how to sell.

Even if you opt for employment, you’ll still need to ‘sell’ yourself to an employer, and ‘sell’ your work to your manager, your teammates and your clients. If you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur, you’ll have to takeaway those inverted commas and learn how to sell full stop.

On the plus side, if you adopt the content marketing approach, you get to produce fabulous work that functions as advertising because it doesn’t look like advertising. Which makes it a hell of a lot more fun to create. 🙂

If you’d like some help with this…

I offer a specialist creative coaching service to help artists and creatives succeed with their online marketing.

What Do You Think?

Do you agree that artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at internet marketing?

Have you successfully used creative content to promote your business?

If you haven’t started internet marketing yet – what’s holding you back?

Outstanding article! In answer your questions: 1. Do Artists have an unfair advantage?… well maybe, in that Art and creativity are engaging. My lovely tweet community of over 2,100 creative individuals and my Creative Potager blog with over 15,500 views since the beginning of the year are FUN! What is not to like? 2. Creative Content to promote business? Yes, yes, yes! My a solo exhibition “Sea, Land and Time” opens Sept 3, 2010 – a big part of getting the word out has been tweeting a link to blog post where there is teaser info about oil paintings and photographs that will be in the show. But that is only the small of it. The big of it is that I am surrounded by a creative community. One of which sent me this article. 3. What may hold someone back? Time is the usual answer. Here is a secret to feeling better about the time. Build your tweeting and blogging time (errrhhum…that means warm fuzzy marketing and selling) into the retail price – and ONLY sell your work at the retail price. Honest – it works. There is the time and the cost of creating your work and then there is about an equal amount of time that goes into market and sell the piece. Yep, you got it. That is why that Gallery you want to represent you wants 50% of the sale price. So if you are doing the sell. Guess what? You should be getting that 50% for your time and effort. Lesson learned from J. Jason Horejs – Gallery Owner with over 17 years in the Business. So write that blog regularly – I post Tuesdays and Thursdays over the summer. Send out those tweets and share with other tweet friends – my tweet friends are responsible for about 40% of my blog traffic. Gotta love them! And anytime you are looking for creative inspirations… come on by Creative Potager and join in the fun – each post has a sprout questions so you can start growing your own creative garden. Until then:) Terrill Welch p.s. I didn’t mention Facebook because I’m a tweet person – just like some people are dog people and some people are cat people and others just like animals. Do what works for you but do it. Your creativity will thank you.

Gah just what I don’t want to do.. spend more time online!! Couldn’t think of anything worse as an artist.

Although done well I believe that a great online presence does amazing things, but I’d much rather put my work and effort into producing a real life art show where instead of people reading me like a magazine for entertainment they can come and connect with me in real life and talk to me about my art in person. Much more fun for both parties! And I believe my sales are much better from art shows than customers buying online.

Not criticising your article at all though, it is well written and truthful.. just it’s not for everyone.

@ Mae – Thanks for sharing such great examples. And sorry for the delay replying, I think you got caught in the spam filter. I agree 100% about the community aspect of things, something I didn’t expect and really value.

And yes, we need to build marketing time into budgeting and pricing! Once you get over that hurdle of accepting marketing as part of the job, everything gets a little easier.

@ Lauren – Thanks for your frank response. Yes, I guess it’s not for everyone. I think there are 3 issues here:

1. Whether you like being online. I agree it’s not for everyone, so you may have to wait for the technology to become more user/friendly and ‘real’!

2. What works best for you. If you get great results from art shows, then maybe that’s all you need. You may be able to do even better by combining it with online activities, but maybe there’s no need, especially if you don’t enjoy the web.

3. You use the word ‘real’ several times. I know what you mean – there’s nothing like meeting in person. But it’s also true that online relationships are ‘real’ – they involve real people, (mostly) using their real names. And they often lead to meetings in ‘real life’ that would never have happened without the internet.

My blogs and other online activities have brought me into contact with lots of creative, interesting, funny and charming people around the world, many of whom I’m now pleased to call my friends, and quite a few of whom I’ve met in person. Without the internet, I’d never have heard of them.

Anyway, thanks for offering a different perspective and all the best with your artwork.

Great article which covers a lot of issues in one sitting! Along the lines of Joseph Jin’s comment, this whole starving artist mentality really has to go. It really has become heavily entrenched in our society. Even the most primitive societies of the world celebrated art. It’s an essential part of what makes the world go round.

As a full time artist in my first year without a backup career burning me out, I now fully respect the value of a dollar. I am sorry to say that at this moment have little money for food, and all the basics for everyday survival. This is my reward for doing what I was born to do. Although I’m an internationally respected artist with even HRH The Duke of Kent owning one of my pieces I can barely survive. It’s just not right.

When I read the headline about artists and creatives having an unfair advantage I became so angry that I endeavored to read the whole article and even leave my comments. This goes to show you what a controversial title can do so good for you Mark! You got my attention from a google search for something else. I’ll believe I have an unfair advantage when I see it in my bank account. Until that time, anyone who truly values artists should give them a break. The average person has no idea what we go through to realize our dreams. Nonetheless, thanks for sharing a well written article with lots of good points. There’s always ways to grow and improve how we market ourselves.

Amazing article, Mark! I am a photographer and writer (yes, some poetry as well) transitioning into a role similar to yours – business coaching for small business and artists. I was casting around the google looking for others who are doing the same thing and there you were. I was having my doubts about it’s value as a business but you have proved me wrong. You have also answered some questions on what next, helped me re-frame the direction of my business and given me some ides for marketing of my own. Thank you! I am very happy you are out there.

And, yes, I work all the time and look forward to the day it pays off.

“Do you agree that artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at internet marketing?” – They do because the act of genuine creation is a compulsion. But, I agree, the art of selling is often very hard.

“Have you successfully used creative content to promote your business?” – I have, but not with any consistency yet.

“If you haven’t started internet marketing yet – what’s holding you back?” – I have started I’ve just lacked a clear idea of what niche I am marketing to. It’s so much easier to spot a niche and develop a brand and message for some one else. I am too close to my own product.

hey mark.. your blog post was very encouraging. thats true that creative people have an advantage but content marketing on the internet is just as tedious as it is in the real world. i am a computer engineer with a creative bend of mind and so i have a taste of both the worlds you can say. i write a blog because well i like writing but i’ve never really tried to go out there and market in online because doing that still feels like “selling” my ideas. that feeling.. holds me back.. and i have no idea how to overcome this block..!

Thanks, glad you liked it. It sounds like there are several things tangled up in your comment:

content marketing on the internet is just as tedious as it is in the real world

Only if you do it wrong!

The whole point of content marketing is that the content is intrinsically valuable and is not explicitly selling anything. E.g. If I write an article about overcoming a creative block, it should be useful to anyone facing that problem, whether or not they buy my coaching services. And if I write something genuinely useful, that increases the chances people will share it… to the point where it comes into contact with people who want to do some coaching. But most people who read it will benefit and never buy, and that’s cool with me. It’s nice to be helpful, and it feels a lot better than publishing a sales pitch.

On the other hand, if you want to sell things, at some point you DO have to sell. There’s a time and a place for that – known as a sales page. 🙂 If you really can’t face writing one of those yourself, it’s worth hiring a copywriter, because you can’t afford to be half-hearted about it.

Thank you for this wonderful article – I couldn’t agree more ! This has been the foundation of my business as I do consider myself an artist-programmer, having dug deep into both worlds – I love combining creativity with technology and after all- screens display graphics better than text, in my opinion.
cheers,
Camilo

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